Kidneys By Larissa Macfarquhar

‘To Give, or Not to Give?’ This essay “Kidneys” is from the book “Strangers Drowning” written by Larissa MacFarquhar, which is about kidney donors and how they go on about their lives after the ‘satisfaction’ of saving someone’s life, or just for pure altruism. The story clearly states how one of the donors in this piece, Paul Wagner, didn’t feel as much as a hero afterward. He lived off the attention from the media, admiration from the people around him, and “had loved telling people that he was donating a kidney to a stranger, just to see their reactions” for his heroic act but after all that had gradually stopped, he felt himself becoming unimportant and dejected. It gives off an idea to the reader that this was
Clearly, Paul has some sort of emotional attachment towards Gail, as she legally owns something that initially belonged to him, keeps referring to her as his late mother, and that he willingly gave up his kidney to save her life. The donors also seem to have control over the recipient which should not be normalized as this could complicate things even more, but this case happens when the two people know each other really well, or are getting to know each other. A rather better approach would be to know the imperative details of an unnamed recipient, only keeping their genders known between the two, and neither of them knowing or trying to meet each other, like how Kimberly Brown-Whale did. Hence, it leads to an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ situation. This wouldn’t lead to any unnecessary sort of attachment or expectations, whether a friendship develops or not. This is what made Paul upset, after “Gail had stopped returning his phone calls”. And frankly, this is where Paul went wrong, as he felt some sort of obligation to start an authentic friendship after getting to know her better, and emotionally expected more from her as time went by. He felt this is what he “had” to do since she has his organ after